Dungeon Finder's Luck of the Draw Buff Increased up to 15% in 4.0.6

Blizzard is taking another step towards improving the quality of random pickup groups and hopes to increase their success rate in Heroic dungeons with their latest plan to increase the effect of the Luck of the Draw buff. Apparently, this buff (which is applied whenever you have a random player in your Dungeon Finder group) wasn't even working properly in Cataclysm dungeons, which caused some encounters and dungeons to be harder than intended for pickup groups. This has been corrected, and the buff will now increase 5% per random player up to a maximum of a 15% increase in damage, healing and health.

Of course, this increase is by no means a way to "fix bad" and some groups will still experience issues, however hopefully this buff, combined with the plethora of dungeon and encounter changes coming with the patch, will make the random dungeon experience more enjoyable (or at least bearable).

What do you think? Is this a step in the right direction?

Check out Ghostcrawler's detailed blog on the subject after the break!

In case you aren't already aware, Luck of the Draw is the name of the buff you get for grouping with random people using Dungeon Finder. It currently provides a 5% buff to damage, healing, and health if you have at least one random player in your group. With patch 4.0.6, we are increasing this buff to 5% damage, healing, and health per random player, up to a maximum of 15%.

In the process of working on this change we actually discovered that the Luck of the Draw buff has not been working in Cataclysm at all, save for a few specific dungeons. This means that the difficulty in almost all normal and Heroic dungeons for those using the Dungeon Finder tool was higher than expected. Still, with that issue corrected in 4.0.6, we feel the bump up to 15% for three or more random players found through the Dungeon Finder is a necessary change.

The intent of Luck of the Draw is to help make up for the lack of coordination, communication, and familiarity that pick up groups suffer relative to organized groups of guild members and friends. Cataclysm dungeons, especially on Heroic mode, are quite challenging and ask for more group organization than the Wrath of the Lich King dungeons did. Therefore, Luck of the Draw became relatively weaker in Cataclysm. I'm painting the picture with unfairly large brush strokes here, but in general, Heroic dungeons are of appropriate difficulty for organized groups, but just brutal on Dungeon Finder groups. Players wonder, and rightly so, why Dungeon Finder supports Cataclysm Heroic dungeons at all when the chance of success is so low.

We think buffing Luck of the Draw is a good way to go about correcting the difficulty differences because it makes things slightly easier on PUGs without depriving the organized groups of a fun challenge. We also think the bonus is modest enough that it won't encourage organized groups to split up and just PUG instead - - the success rate for PUGs relative to organized groups is just that far behind. We still think you'll have more fun and a greater chance of success running dungeons with friends, but when that isn’t possible, we hope this change will make Dungeon Finder a more pleasant experience. Also remember that patch 4.0.6 is adjusting the difficulty of some bosses that are particularly unforgiving, such as Ozruk in Heroic Stonecore, though to be fair, we are buffing some underperforming encounters as well. In addition, we are offering larger Justice Point rewards for players who just prefer the faster pace and greater success rate of normal dungeons, and by the time 4.1 comes out everyone will have access to more powerful gear, making the older content even easier. But then there'll be new challenges to face!

We'd like to thank everyone who has provided us with feedback. We do listen, even if we don't immediately deploy every design change suggested by the player community. Our intent is to make the game fun for a wide variety of players, which can be quite a challenge when you have a community this large and this varied. We hope you continue to enjoy the game, and look forward to sharing more changes (and a few surprises) in the months ahead.

-Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and was attacked by a coati as a child. (True story.)

Comment by Onimushua

Comment by Amuynhealz

on 2011-02-04T16:10:14-06:00

I'm not sure I understand how this works. Ok, I group with my friend, and we enter a random dungeon. There are 3 random people, so we get a 15% buff. But what if the 3 are a pre-made group from another server? Because they only got 2 random people, is their buff 10%?

Comment by Kanariya

Comment by Jamdude

on 2011-02-04T16:51:47-06:00

@AmuynhealzThe way I'm reading it, that would mean no-one in the group is "random" and you wouldn't get any buff. Probably wrong but that's the way it reads for me.

Also, I don't see why they should be made easier. When me and other guild members hit 85 in the first week of cataclysm we had to look into the tactics, form a strategy and execute it. Why shouldn't others? I'm not saying this because I feel cheated, I say it because we worked at it, it made us better players, and prepared us for the harder content ahead, such as raids. I feel I am a much better player than I was in WotLK, I understand my class and how to use it, and understand encounters and how to use the group I'm in to the best of it's potential.

Don't make it easier for less experienced players, leave it hard so they become better players.

Hell even make it harder to discourage bad players from entering the random queue. You wouldn't dream of pugging BWD or Bastion of Twilight Heroic, maybe we shouldn't PUG heroic dungeons either. Leave normal dungeons for less experience players, and heroics for the slightly harder players or those that want a challenge.

Comment by shippou

on 2011-02-04T16:58:15-06:00

Starting to feel like ICC.. is a 30% buff soon to become?

We are talking about 2 different buffs.

The one in ICC was for guilds to advance over time.

This one doesn't have the time factor but instead the lack of cordination and communication that weakens the group.

Sure you can look at them in the same way but they represent different ideas

Comment by Aestu

Wrath was the worst expansion, not because of the quality of raids or differences in questing, but because, on the whole, it catered to the lowest common denominator. In the process it introduced or re-enforced trends in the game that have made the game much less social and the vast majority of the content much less challenging.

That's a genie that can't easily be put back in the bottle.

And I seriously doubt that the lowest common denominators will tolerate Blizzard's mild attempts to ramp the challenge and effort back up, and shortly after release, Cata will revert to a Wrath rofl-fest.

Wrath will ultimately be remembered as the expansion during which WoW "jumped the shark".

Unfortunately, Cata, because of its attempt to reverse the trend and Blizzard's impending and predictable capitulation will get the blame for WoW's decline, but the seeds of destruction were sown in Wrath.

Comment by lonewarrior

on 2011-02-04T17:02:13-06:00

and so it begins.."You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the WotLK Zone!".....do.do.do.do....

Comment by Azrile

on 2011-02-04T17:02:38-06:00

The thing that GC does not understand is that it is not a15% thing, or a ´get better gear´thing. Pug failures happen because of insta-kill mechanisms in boss fights.... especially ones that get the healer or tank, because there is no coming back. You can put all the enchants or 15% bonuses you want, but if the tank dies because of an insta-kill ability on the first or third or final bosses of SC, there is no recovery.

The difficulty of PUG heroics isn´t CC, or coordination on anything.. it´s simply the randomness of not knowing if the tank or healer will get insta killed because they don{t know a fight.

There are just too many mechanisms that happen in 1-3 seconds that will kill someone without any hope.

The reason ´do not stand in fire´is such a catchphrase is because in that situation, the person had to be clueless for a long amount of time before they died. Now all it takes is a bad camera angle and you wiped your group.

Comment by wiccamoon

on 2011-02-04T17:05:35-06:00

I'm not sure I understand how this works. Ok, I group with my friend, and we enter a random dungeon. There are 3 random people, so we get a 15% buff. But what if the 3 are a pre-made group from another server? Because they only got 2 random people, is their buff 10%?

It sounds like this is the way it works. Since you guys enter a dungeon with 3 random people that you dont know, you would get a 15% buff, and since they only had to pug 2 strangers, they only get 10% since they dont need as much of a buff with the familiarity of their pre-made group.

Comment by Aestu

on 2011-02-04T17:07:49-06:00

I don't see the connection between "familiarity" and "DPS/healing".

Comment by Jamdude

on 2011-02-04T17:07:52-06:00

There are just too many mechanisms that happen in 1-3 seconds that will kill someone without any hope.

There is always a way around it;

a: if it's a movement factor, the tank should know the fight and avoid itb: if it's interruptible, it should be interruptedc: if it's not avoidable and it's not interruptible then it probably needs to be healed through

These are all things that will improve you as a player and prepare you for harder content such as raiding.

All of those factors need to be understood in order to do Omnotron Defense (1st raid boss guilds do)

Comment by Goldish

on 2011-02-04T17:11:19-06:00

Not that I have any trouble in Dungeons right now but I think it would have been better to just do like ICC and buff it over time instead of giving pugs a straight 15% damage buff just for the assumption they are terrible players.

So next patch everyone will be under-geared but Pugs will get a 15% advantage over groups. Doesn't seem fair to me. Guilds will work through it while the squeaky wheel will continue to get the grease.

Get more bad people good gear so they can think they are good in their 15% damage buff epics. Oh well.

Comment by pezz

on 2011-02-04T17:48:53-06:00

I don't see the connection between "familiarity" and "DPS/healing".

There isn't one, but you can't make a stupid buff.

I actually like, in relative terms, what Blizzard did. They played a bad hand as well as they could have.

First, look at the problem:

Random dungeons often go horribly. They require more coordination and competence than most players are willing and able to exhibit. Due to an imbalance in chosen roles, they also have long queue times for DPS (and in some cases healers).

Because most of us have basic pattern recognition skills, random dungeons get a reputation for being awful. This exacerbates both the length of queue problem and the quality of play problem.

It doesn't seem, at first, like performance would decline in this way, but think about it. What's your mentality when you zone in? You're there, with four other players, who, you assume, are bads. You assume they'll be unresponsive to suggestions, advice, or explanations. So you don't give any of this. Communication is killed before it starts because we all assume it's pointless. You're also more likely to just not sign up. Especially if you're a desirable role since you can more easily cherry pick people from your own realm (obviously this makes the queues longer).

So what needs to happen in a perfect world to fix these problems?

1) Better players2) More tanks (and probably a handful more healers)3) Perceptions about the quality of dungeons to change

Blizzard can't really fix any of those directly. This gives them, as far as I can tell, three options:

1) Tell players to suck it up, alienating (to some extent) the player base that doesn't have a lot of friends or who doesn't want to/is unable to join a half-competent guild.

2) Nerf everything. And I promise you, if this change bothers you, you'd be foaming at the mouth if they'd done this. Every armchair business man and MMO expert would be saying I told you so for months. However much you disagree with what they did I promise you there'd be more disagreement with option two here.

3) What they did. It doesn't effect the difficulty level for those of us who do dungeons with guild members, it just (hopefully) expedites the process a little bit, dealing both with the incompetence (to some extent. Like I said there's no stupid buff but you're still killing stuff faster and healing a little better) and the perception of failure. Now hopefully at least some people will say 'oh maybe now they're not so bad with this buff, I will make more of an investment in seeing it through/using this tool at all.'

Comment by Irshim

on 2011-02-04T18:06:34-06:00

I don't see the problem I rarely get a pug that fails...I disagree with this change. If they put out the boss changes first before this, people would find they don't need this buff.

Comment by EBannion

on 2011-02-04T18:07:35-06:00

It doesn't seem, at first, like performance would decline in this way, but think about it. What's your mentality when you zone in? You're there, with four other players, who, you assume, are bads. You assume they'll be unresponsive to suggestions, advice, or explanations. So you don't give any of this. Communication is killed before it starts because we all assume it's pointless. You're also more likely to just not sign up. Especially if you're a desirable role since you can more easily cherry pick people from your own realm (obviously this makes the queues longer).

This is your problem right here (by you I don't just mean the poster but everyone who thinks this way).

When -I- zone into an instance, I 'assume' that the people I'm with want to be successful, have probably never been here before (better safe than sorry) and are competent enough to know when I say 'Mage, sheep the moon' they understand what I am asking.

Then, I also assume they understand English.

I don't assume anything about their skill level, and I -DEFINITELY- don't 'assume they'll be unresponsive to suggestions... or explanations.'

If we all want to be successful at the dungeon, we should all be ready to talk to each other.

I find that when I go into a dungeon with that attitude, we are almost always successful. We might wipe once or twice or ten times because poeple are learning or getting used to it, but every wipe we get farther, and we eventually finish.

Something I think people don't get about this game is that dying is not terrible, it isn't bad, it doesn't mean you are a bad player, and it doesn't reflect poorly on your 'coolness'. It just means you didn't know something which you now (I hope) know.

The only time this procedure fails is when someone aggressively refuses to cooperate, and that's what 'Vote to Kick' is for. Most of the other 'bads' (i.e. inexperienced, unfamiliar, or undergeared but well-meaning players) will either improve with gentle advising or quit.

Oh, also:

There are just too many mechanisms that happen in 1-3 seconds that will kill someone without any hope.

There is always a way around it;

a: if it's a movement factor, the tank should know the fight and avoid itb: if it's interruptible, it should be interruptedc: if it's not avoidable and it's not interruptible then it probably needs to be healed through

These are all things that will improve you as a player and prepare you for harder content such as raiding.

All of those factors need to be understood in order to do Omnotron Defense (1st raid boss guilds do)

You only die in 1-3 seconds the first time. If you ca'n't handle one wipe, you're playing the wrong game. If you ca'n't fix 'not knowing the ability' in one or two tries, then you aren't learning. After that it's all fine-tuning of execution.

Comment by cjisme3

on 2011-02-04T18:17:03-06:00

Pugs are never going to be some ones favorite pass time though... Too many people who do not know fights are still waiting to @#$% a group up.

Comment by ClanniaFarstride

on 2011-02-04T18:57:00-06:00

-snip-

A thousand time over, this. Too many people have the opinion of 'pezz', which is the cause for so many 'bads'. Nobody is willing to help the people who suck get better. Now, of course there will be people who refuse to learn, but that's just people being belligerent. This is why we have a vote to kick feature, which needs the time limiter removed, because when someone refuses to learn and cooperate, you can typically tell within the first few pulls. 20 minutes is a bit too long.

Comment by Azrile

on 2011-02-04T19:19:07-06:00

There are just too many mechanisms that happen in 1-3 seconds that will kill someone without any hope.

There is always a way around it;

a: if it's a movement factor, the tank should know the fight and avoid itb: if it's interruptible, it should be interruptedc: if it's not avoidable and it's not interruptible then it probably needs to be healed through

These are all things that will improve you as a player and prepare you for harder content such as raiding.

All of those factors need to be understood in order to do Omnotron Defense (1st raid boss guilds do)

That is kinda my point. Even pug heroics are fairly easy now. They were brutal the first few weeks because there was never a ´grind down´ loss.. it was always insta-kill stuff that doomed pugs. Seriously, how many pugs broke apart on the first boss in SC? answer... all of them.

If they had given us a 15% bonus boost back then, it would not have mattered at all... people would still have been complaining about how hard they are.

The coordination difference between a full pug and my raid guilds heroics is not that much anymore. Almost everyone knows what they are doing.

My entire point is the problem in the beginning of Cata was just the sheer number of insta-kill abilities with bosses. It would be different if you walked into heroics and could see yourself failing at enrage sometimes etc.